I have joined a spiritual group and we meet once a month. It's becoming something I look forward to every month. I wish we met once a week. Last week we enjoyed the presence of Michelle and Joel Levey who led us in a meditation. I am learning that there are so many variations on a theme when it comes to meditation. This one had all sorts of Sanskrit-ish names that I don't remember, but we began with our hands on our hearts smiling at ourselves. I can't tell you how hard that was to do! We smile at our friends, our family, we do so much to make others feel good, but we forget that we need to save a smile for ourselves once in a while. As I sat there feeling stupid with my hand on my heart, I tried smiling. I felt like my face was made of clay. That nasty crumbly kind that crumbles when you try to work it, even after you pour water on it, it still crumbles away in your hand. I felt if I smiled, my cheeks would fall off and land in my lap.When I finally did smile, it felt like one of those weird wiggly Charlie Brown smiles.Next we visualized a hot sun in front of us, which we had to accept into our hands and then try to mentally push the sun and all its heat and healing power into our chests and hearts. OK, I know I'm not the only went who had trouble shoving a giant sun into their hearts, but I swear that outside, the sun came out at that moment and shone directly into my eyes. I took a peek, but it was as it had been before, just a bare a hint of sun among the Seattle clouds.

The Earth "Breathing"

As we approached 11/11/10 at 11:11am, we attempted to join with a worldwide grid of healing power. With each breath we were meant to inhale that sunlight and then breathe it out again, attempting to reach an ever widening circle of people we could heal. It began with our neighbours in the room, then our friends and family in Seattle, then an ever increasing ripple across the world – people in Haiti, girls in Rwanda, other widows around the world. I imagined a sort of superman effect where he speeds around the world leaving a trail of light like wool wrapped around a marble. My light turned into a kind of atmosphere of healing, all fluffy and yellow, like a big wooly blanket. When I breathed in, I breathed in all the sadness, suffering and detritus in the world, and when I breathed out, that junk was all cleaned and pure again. One woman later described feeling like a giant liver, cleaning the world's ills which I thought was an apt description.We came away feeling peaceful, like we had not only healed ourselves a little, but healed the world a little too.On Sunday, Olivia's group Richard's Rwanda IMPUHWE held a fund raising brunch. The girls organized it themselves and did an incredible job. They got 120 people to a small and magical community center for those recovering from homelessness and addiction, served an amazing breakfast and blew everyone away with their stories. One of the girls from the FAWE school in Rwanda is visiting and got up to say some words of thanks. It was a powerful moment. In the end, they raised $30,000 enough to send 30 girls all the way through high school.Amazing the power of a little breath.